Simple Steps on Handling Tasks
Fast handling of things has been the talk of the various categories of the work force for years and years. The basis of fast handling of tasks is time and mind management. It really boils down to these 2 major resources that we all have but tend to over (or under) use. The technique we will discuss here is how manage your time against your mind’s concentration in 5 simple steps:
- Draw a To-Do list with your tasks numbered in priority, importance, and scheduled dates and times of completion. Once a thing comes up (and mind you, “comes up” means “once it appears in the queue of things you have to do”, and not when it explodes as a problem!): When something comes up, there are a few simple steps you should follow in order to maintain rhythm with all your other things.
- Assess the importance of the new task (against all others in your list). In other words, you must evaluate whether or not this new task:
- Is more urging than others on the list
- Has more potential damage/harm if not done/handled before a specific time.
- Dependant on other tasks on the list? If other dependant tasks are not on the list and they’re your responsibility, then add them; otherwise, add a task to follow up on whoever has to take care of the dependant tasks to yours.
- Insert the new task (and their dependencies or follow-ups on dependencies) into their correct (or most appropriate) priority order on your To-Do list.
- Periodically Examine/Review your To-Do list. This is a must do issue every pre-set period of time proportional to the average length of tasks. For instance if your tasks are days and weeks long, then your review should be conducted every other day or every day. On the other hand, the review should be done every 2-3 hours if the tasks are within the minutes or hours (maximum 1 day) range.
Be careful not to overwhelm yourself with review sessions and finally waste your time. During the review session, examine which tasks have ended on time, which tasks are running late and which tasks seem to have problems in them. Whilst reviewing, re-arrange your priorities or resources accordingly to manage the lag in some projects/tasks (e.g. you might call in someone for help on something) or you may delay some other tasks to handle more urging ones. Such important decisions are a must make and take in order to constantly maintain order in your To-Do list and hence the system of your day and life. - For tasks of priority 1 (and high concentration), do not perform multi-tasking.
This is an issue that one must handle as he/she goes along. For top priority tasks that need 100% of your concentration, like writing a business proposal or talking to your manager, DO NOT multi-task. Multitasking will not only immensely delay your schedule but will result in the original task taking ages and not getting done in half the quality it could have been done in.For other less important (but still on the list) tasks, you might as well multi-task. For instance, you have to prepare lunch and listen to the news. Then do both at the same time! Switch on the television in the kitchen and prepare lunch. Wherever there are timers on steps in the food preparation process, DO put them on and switch on their alarms – so those will alert you in case you were slightly distracted watching TV.
Following the five simple steps will not only make you get your things done, but also you’ll have the time to spend on yourself and for relaxation purposes rather than always running out of time. You know what? You might as well add the time you need to relax on your list, so you can work towards fulfilling it as well.
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Comments
J. H. Shewmaker says on December 8th, 2005 at 3:14 am
Is more urging than others on the list
Has more potential damage/harm if not done/handled before a specific time.
This is a prime example of confusing the urgent with the important, what Stephen Covey would call Quadrant 1 mentality. The reason that relationships get neglected is that people define priority based upon the short-term and the deadline. Since relationships are by definition long-term, they are not prioritized.
Andrew Sidwell says on December 8th, 2005 at 4:57 am
I’d argue that todolists are fundamentally the wrong way to handle things to do. Having a prioritised todolist means that you’re likely to try and work on it from beginning to end, and you’ll feel that you have to get everything on it done, just so you can have an empty list (the name implies that it’s stuff to do *now*, not when you feel it’s most appropriate).
I prefer a very slight paradigm shift: a list of things to have done. This means that you can have a massive list of things to have done, but you never actually think of it as things to do now. This means you can sit back on any given day, look at the list and think: What have I got the energy to do? What needs to be done sooner rather than later? This gives you more flexibility than trying to prearrange a list. I’d also advise using a calendar to mark out when things have to be done by, rather than trying to put this into a general prioritisation formula.
My priorities change far too often to be able to write them down in any form without wasting ink (or spending time editing a wiki page). If I keep a list of things to have done, however, I know at a glace what I need to do now or later, and I can use my brain as the prioritiser and actioner, rather than a task-in-task-out-get-it-done-now machine.
A review, however, is essential. I’m not sure why examining and reviewing the list are counted as the same thing in this article, as they’re not. You may need to frequently scan the list to work out what to do next, if you have many short actions, or you may need to scan it less frequently. Review would be looking through it, altering anything that needs altering and removing items that no longer need to be done (or you’ve already done, if you don’t tick things off as soon as you do them). I personally do a review every few days, and however frequent or infrequent your tasks are, I think much more than every two days is overkill.
Another point: rather than saying “never multitask on high priority items”, I’d say “never multitask on anything that requires your attention”. This means you have to figure out what requires thought. Generally, trying to multitask on anything that requires thought *at all* will mean you get everything you’re trying to get done, done slower. However, preparing food is perhaps something that requires little thought and you could happily watch the news while doing it.
(Apologies for the long comment.)
Scot Becker says on December 9th, 2005 at 9:31 pm
Re: Andrew’s last (very helpful) comment: This resonates. As a practical matter, if you have a “massive list of things to have done,” how do you eyeball it all and size it up so quickly? If my lists grow beyond 10 things I find it takes a lot of mental energy each time I want to glance down them and decide what the next most important thing is to do. Have you found a means of easing that (visual and mental) burden each time you switch actions? Or do you just read/think through your long list?
And what does it look like to link the time sensitive things to a calendar? Presumably you have them on your ‘to have done’ list as well. You consult the list when you are assesing what needs doing, but the list doesn’t help you visualize what needs doing next. And then you have it on the calendar, where it’s easy to see the due date, but wouldn’t exactly be the place you’d be looking when you where picking your next thing to do. How do you connect the two?
(no apologies necessary)